Half of university students willing to cheat, study finds

Half of university students are prepared to cheat in their exams by handing in
essays bought off the internet, new research reveals.

Exam cheatPhoto: Alamy

Julie Henry, Education Correspondent

8:30AM BST 20 Jun 2010

The study suggests rampant plagiarism at British universities, with thousands of cases going unreported because if essays are bespoke and written to undergraduates' specifications, they are unlikely to be detected by anti-plagiarism software.

The Manchester University research, which comes as students across the country hand in coursework and dissertations which count towards their degrees, also revealed that 45 per cent of students were "sure" that in the past year, another students had cheated during an essay, report, test or exam.

Students' readiness to pass off work as their own is fuelling the online essay industry, estimated to be worth more than £200 million in the UK.

Some companies have thousands of specialist writers on their books and report increasing turnover each year. Undergraduates are also buying work from sites in the US and India.

"It is quite remarkable how many students indicated a willingness to buy," said Dr Dan Rigby, a Manchester University economics lecturer who will present the findings at the fourth international Plagiarism conference in Newcastle tomorrow (MON). "Their apparent lack of concern at revealing this in a survey run by academics at their university is startling.

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"It points to a lot of essays being produced for a lot of students. At the same time, there are not many cases or disciplinary hearings coming forward so detection is a problem. Although the sample of students is small, the results are indicative, statistically robust and rather disturbing."

The study, the first of its kind, fuels growing concerns about plagiarism at both at school and university level. A recent report by the universities select committee concluded that plagiarism was a serious problem and that the opportunities for it had risen "exponentially" because of material available on the internet and the development of the market in essay writing services.

MPs called for great sanctions against students that cheat and criminal prosecution of those running essay companies.

In schools, coursework has been abolished for many GCSE and A-level courses and replaced by controlled assessment, which must be completed in class, because of concerns that much of the work being handed in was downloaded off the internet or written by parents. Grade A coursework in all subjects could be bought off ebay for as little as £1.50.

The Manchester study questioned 90 second and third year students at three universities. It found they would be prepared to pay more than £300 for essays gaining a first class mark, £217 for a 2:1 and £164 for a 2:2 piece of work. Longer dissertations can cost up to £2,500. Some offer a cash back guarantee if the student is not awarded a certain degree classification.

While many of those questioned were convinced that another student had cheated recently, only one had reported a case to the university authorities. The majority said it was unlikely that a typical student would turn-in a classmate.

"What is quite striking is that it appears that students did not see this form of behaviour as unethical," said Mr Rigby. "There was very little stigma attached to it. One student told me how he was working in the library next to someone who openly got out his credit card and paid for an essay off the internet.

"One could argue that in the modern university, the student is treated as, and increasingly identifies as, a consumer demanding 'value for money'. Perhaps subcontracting some of the work is seen as just an other rational choice by many informed consumers on campus."

Academics have now drawn up a "plagiarism tariff" for dealing with offenders and are urging universities to adopt it. In the case of passing off work obtained from a ghostwriting service, the most serious penalties includes expulsion from the university, a zero mark for the module and a bar on resits, or the classification of the offenders' degree being reduced.

At the moment there is vast variation across the sector in how institutions treat students who have been found to have cheated.